Should I consider my pre-1964 silver coins junk?

Man you nailed it. That’s me in a nut shell. Love you Charley

 

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I would keep all Mercury silver cuz their a beautiful coin My favorite. I also only have 1 somewhere

 

1964 half dollars in mint state are junk silver you say. The coins were made for a reason

 

I think I have a 63 silver. Part of my 3 coin hoard. The other 2 are Canada quarters

 

But it’s kinda nice to put a face on it!!! Beats selling to a P.O. Box

 

That’s a good olé boy. Thems the best kind. Honest Friendly

 

Well I went to the FUN Show today. I had those 186 dimes (100 Roosevelt and 86 Merc's). I saw an older couple I estimate in their mid-80's with their own small booth. I had just decided I'd keep my semi-junk silver, but these 2 caught my eye...as I was leaving after selling 4 slabbed Morgans, a MS63 Rd Indian, a Capped Bust Half-not graded and likely cleaned along with an ugly MS64 Sequi. Half. I was happy with the prices I got, all simple cash transactions...so getting back to the the older married couple; I saw they were selling mostly "Junk Silver".....so I stopped to see what they would give me for the dimes? Well $1.95 per coin was their offer. I didn't dicker, I just sold all of them for $362.70.....along with some great stories from the old guy. I kept my other denominations of like-named silver and went home after a fun afternoon.

 

1964 Kennedy half dollars unless pristine could be consider junk silver. There were about 275 million made in Philadelphia and about 160 million made in Denver. Very few actually circulated most were horded. So unless they look like an MS 65 most dealers would classify them as junk silver or bullion. Don't confuse the word JUNK with TRASH. Junk silver is considered as a form of bullion and some will end up in the melting pot. With junk silver being consider as bullion it is usually sold by weight or face value. A bag of 1964 silver half dollars in mint state would be sold at X times face value. X being the spot value of silver. So $100.00 in face value of low MS grade Kennedy half dollars may get sold for 20 times face. Which means $1,000.00. I'm just using this as an example of sell prices.. Most dealers will set their sell price based on the spot price of the day and what they think they can get for them. Trash silver coins are going right to the melting pot. These would be common coins of very low grade, damage or have something else wrong with them. Just to let you know there is a big behind the scenes market for junk silver. This where dealers sell a lot of junk silver and that silver is in turn sold to people like survivalist or people that like to have emergency money. Silver is a great barter tool. This is also why silver eagles and maple leaf's are so popular. As strange as it may seem there is really no reason for government to strike silver or gold bullion coins. People do collect these coins but, a collector may only want one or two each year. So where do all the rolls of silver eagles go. Just like junk silver they go to people that really like the idea of having real money and not paper or base metal coin.

 

Yeah. I get it. My mind set is that they made these 64’s because a tragedy to one of our (if you can remember) states leader. I lived it. It was a terrible tuff time. Kinda the worst day in some of our young minds at the time. I cried in my room alone for seems like days. That’s what those 64’s mean to me. I get your explanation. My thoughts were on the front page of every newspaper. This was a real person. Not lady Liberty or an eagle

 

usa coinbook, free to list and only 2 % of hammer or buy it now price and they use paypal

 

Yes they were. They were made to be spent. They were also made in the millions and most are still around. Between the P & D mints there were over 400,000,000 made. Unless they are in very high grades they are considered junk silver.

 

more or less than morgans?

 

I don't know of any year in which the Morgan dollars were struck even close to the amount of the 1964 Kennedy's. I think the largest year of production was 1921. All three mints combined struck around 85,000,000. The 1921 P's are considered junk silver unless in high grade. 1922 & 1923 Peace dollars also tend to be classified as junk silver because of how common they are.

 

So, what are some of these "key dates" and MMs to look for in your pre-65, 90% coins? And do they need to be AU to be worth pulling out of the spot value "junk" bag?

 

It appears that you may be new to coin collecting, and if you haven't yet acquired a reference to U.S. coins, I'd suggest you search for an inexpensive "Coins Red Book". Acquire same!

The dates you might save are generally dependent upon the number minted, varying by denomination (i.e. dime, quarter, half-dollar, etc.).

I'd suggest you sort by denomination, look at the mintages in the "Red Book", and keep those with your compiled list of probably the half-dozen lower mintage coins.

If you can read the date, keep all of the lower mintage coins, if any are found.

JMHO

 

My opinion, with "junk silver" or 90% and 40%, it was picked through for better dates by 1950, and by 1964 onward when silver was removed, this is where the hoarding really happened. Better dates just really aren't going to appear in most cases. BUT I'd say to go through them anyways because who you sell it to probably will and it might as well be you that finds something!

Anyways, I'd say to definitely sort it by
1. quarters, dimes, half dollars from 1964 or earlier (90%) 10 dimes, 4 quarters, two half dollars, all works out the same.
2. half dollars from 1965-1970 (40%)
3. any silver dollars from 1878-1935 you might have, (they should pay more for that regardless.)
4. anything earlier dated or foreign which would need to all be calculated at different rates.

my opinion if you do this, the person you are dealing with will recognize it was sorted and you aren't some rando that doesn't know what they have and wants them to sort through it. it will go a lot quicker.

I'd also say if you have BU uncirculated, you might try to get a little premium on that. there really isn't a "AU" qualifier for junk silver, but absolutely there is Average Circulated, and then BU and BU sells for about $30 more for quarters or halves than an average circulated roll. this "should" apply to you if you do the sorting for them and it's clear it's BU. if they won't I'd say sell the BU stuff on Ebay, the people there will pay the higher price for it. Even as roll of 1964 BU dimes they will sell for $20 more than a roll of average circulated coin. I mean you can't nickel and dime them too much before they are like "leave my store!" but they will sell like walkers at a different rate than franklins, and franklins at a different rate than Kennedy's ect. same goes with dimes and quarters.

If I sell my wheat cent accumulation as a pile, I will get like 2 cents each, maybe 3 cents each. maybe like $2 a roll even, , but if I sort them, and have rolls at 1909-1919, 1920-1929, 1930-1939 and the rest as "common", I can get a better price for the sorting on the earlier date rolls because the dealer doesn't have to do the sorting work and can sell them for a higher price, like the 1909-1919 roll for $15, the 1920-1929 for like $10 and the 1930-1939 for maybe $8 so clearly he can pay more once it's verified it's as represented.


pretty much as far as junk silver goes, if it's not BU it's all average circulation until it's "culls and damaged".

I guess it matters if you decide the effort is worth it or not really to squeeze out a few extra dollars.

 

I'd agree, with one caveat: the folks who find, steal, or inherit collections and don't know key dates will dump them all into a CoinStar, deposit them at a bank, or hand them to a cashier. So there's a steady trickle of such stuff coming back into circulation. It's a very small trickle, but it's likely to continue as long as coins circulate.

 

Totally agree!

 

I bought junk silver bags in $10 face to $100 face back in 2009 and stopped in 2017 or 2018. Until very recently I’ve never looked at it. What I’m finding in my junk silver I highly doubt they put in junk silver anymore.

I filled a Roosevelt Dime folder and with the excerpt of 1 coin, I would have filled a second one. I also had every Mercury Dime except for the 1916-D. I didn’t do a Quarter folder but I was only 4 coins short of Franklin Halves and about 10-12 coins short of having all the Walkers.

Even the semi-key dates were in them. I found numerous coins of all denominations that are not semi-key dates but they are tougher dates that command a small premium. If you have any junk silver I would suggest taking the time to go through them.

 

I remember someone saying here that he'd love to buy some of the "junk silver" bags that were thrown together during one of silver's historic peaks. I feel the same way. In fact, I had some pretty good luck with exactly those sorts of lots.